Going back to his campaign pledges, President Trump promised to cut government waste in conjunction with cutting corporate tax rates. As part of this, the president threatened to terminate contracts with the two largest government contractors: Lockheed Martin’s F-35 and Boeing’s Air Force One programs.

A surge in contract terminations could be in the offing as federal agencies align their goals with White House intentions. With this in mind, preparing for the possibility of a contract termination is a defensive strategy that contractors should undertake now. Here are three key steps you should consider immediately:

Plan ahead. Never consider your contract as “termination-proof.”

Fully understand the contract termination process

Learn how to calculate and submit your Request for Equitable Adjustment or settlement proposal.

The possibility of a contract termination should be incorporated into every government contractor’s business continuity plan. Implementing safeguards and procedures designed to mitigate the risk of a termination will limit the impact it has on your organization’s operations. Ask yourself, “Does my organization have procedures in place to deal with cure notices, customer complaints, and quality issues? What about monitoring subcontractors?”

DoD’s presentation lasted approximately four hours and covered a wide range of topics relating to DoD’s expectations for contractor implementation of cybersecurity requirements for information systems where controlled defense information (CDI) is processed, resides or transits.

On the panel and responding to attendees’ questions were representatives of DoD’s Chief Information Officer, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and the Defense Information Systems Agency.

An in-depth discussion of key highlights from the briefing are provided here.

Many contractors we talk to believe that cybersecurity requirements are exclusively a concern of contractors working with DoD or with highly-classified, top secret projects. While perhaps true to some degree in the past, that belief is now outdated. In recent years, the federal government has steadily expanded the reach of cybersecurity requirements imposed on contractors and contracts of all shapes and sizes, and that trend is expected to continue.

As an example, one year ago this month the government implemented a new FAR clause, FAR 52.204-21, entitled “Basic Safeguarding of Covered Contractor Information Systems.” This clause, which went into effect on May 16, 2016, brings basic cybersecurity requirements to many federal contracts. The clause is supposed to be inserted in every solicitation and contract where a contractor or subcontractor at any tier may have federal contract information (FCI) residing in or transitioning through its information system.

FCI is broadly defined as “information, not intended for public release, that is provided by or generated for the Government under a contract to develop or deliver a product or service to the Government, but not including information provided by the Government to the public.”

Prime contractors are also expected to flow down the clause to subcontracts at all tiers that may have FCI in their systems, including subcontracts for commercial items (but not subcontracts for commercial off-the-shelf items).

Across the globe, thousands of millennials are starting businesses on the premise today’s smartphone technology can create new value and disrupt entire industries.

Most of these digital revolutionaries will fail, for the usual reasons: they lacked industry contacts, targeted the wrong market, underestimated users’ resistance to new technology, or couldn’t raise capital in a saturated ecosystem.

But Kitchener, Ont.-based Bridgit has found the formula for disrupting markets. Through deep industry knowledge, a tight focus on customer value, and sheer hard work, its founders — Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake — are changing the way the construction industry shares data across Canada and in major U.S. cities.

It’s a mission Lake, 24, has taken personally since she began working in construction while studying structural engineering at Western University in London, Ont. “I showed up on a job site with my iPhone, and got handed a clipboard,” she recalls. The hundreds of inputs required in a major construction project were still being recorded on paper, Excel spreadsheets and Post-It Notes, making sharing this information difficult and costly.

Contractors would be wise to keep a close watch on FedBizOpps.gov, otherwise they run the risk missing the chance to protest a sole source award.

When an agency decides to make an award without competition, it often must publish a Justification and Approval (referred to simply as a “J&A”) on FedBizOpps explaining why a competition would not meet the agency’s needs. A potential competitor seeking to protest such an award at the GAO must file the protest before 10 days have passed from publication of the J&A, otherwise the protest may be untimely. A competitor that is not paying attention could be out of luck.

The work was originally competed, and Western Star Hospital Authority, Inc. submitted a proposal. The Army rejected Western Star’s proposal, saying that Western Star had not proposed pricing for all CLINs, as required by the solicitation.

Government business intelligence company Onvia has released a new report addressing key changes and shifts taking place in public purchasing today.

The report — based on a survey of 668 procurement professionals and key decision makers from state, county and city agencies, including school and special districts nationwide — provides insights to businesses seeking contracts with these units of government.

In the report, agencies describe their current contracting environment as generally healthy and improving. 39% of the survey respondents expect growth in bid volumes in the next 12 months. The report notes the “recent surge in demand for infrastructure bids stemming from the $200 billion in tax initiatives for these projects approved by voters nationwide in November.”

The increase in opportunities is contrasted with agency staff’s collective recognition that the formal bid/RFP process is “one of the most challenging aspects of their job, particularly in the areas of research, planning and specifications.” State and local government procurement teams report that since last year there has been an increase in the share of procurement staff that are stretched or overworked. Onvia notes that when purchasing staffs are overworked it has a negative impact on businesses who have to navigate through poorly worded bid language, adding preparation time for bidders.

Given the current purchasing environment, Onvia’s report contains a number of meaningful observations for businesses in pursuit of contracts with state, local, and educational (SLED) institutions. Among the observations:

The most successful government contractors do not wait around for a bid or RFP to be issued but are actively building constructive, consultative relationships with government agencies. Without demanding loyalty or future business, these proactive companies will offer helpful advice to busy, overworked buyers about market or product trends, best practices and pricing guidelines that can help procurement staff during the critical pre-bid phase of research and planning.

Forward-thinking and proactive contractors should pay attention to these trends and consider how to be sensitive to buyer and user needs in their outreach, communications and project management. Where there is greater uncertainty, stress or confusion on the buying side, vendors that become known for working well with agency teams as valued partners can help differentiate themselves and earn more business even if they are not typically the lowest-priced option.

In February 2011, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) released a memo called “Myth-Busting: Addressing Misconceptions to Improve Communication with Industry During the Acquisition Process.”

They recognized that agencies were hesitating to meet with vendors out of fear of protests or because they just didn’t have effective strategies to manage these communications. Vendors, on the other hand, had fears of their own, such as inadvertently creating a conflict of interest that would keep them from competing on future requirements.

They held a series of sessions with representatives from all aspects of the acquisition process to get a better sense of everything that was getting in the way of clear communication between the federal agencies and their prospective vendors. Out of those talks, they pulled together the 10 misconceptions they heard most frequently, and gathered them in this myth-busting memo, along with the corresponding fact and a detailed explanation for each point.

You can read the full report in the White House Archives, but here is a summary of the 10 myths and facts, along with my comments. This document may be a few years old, but the myths are still around!

Submitting your company’s bid proposal close to the deadline can be risky and have grave consequences.

The government has repeatedly rejected proposals submitted before, but received after, the deadline because of technical glitches.

In submitting a proposal for a government contract, the onus is on the contractor to ensure that its proposal is received prior to the exact time specified for receipt of proposals. The deadlines set forth in the solicitation are strictly enforced unless: the agency receives the proposal before the contract is awarded, the contracting officer determines that accepting the late proposal would not unduly delay the acquisition, and: (i) the proposal was submitted electronically and received at “the initial point of entry to the Government infrastructure not later not later than 5:00 p.m. one working day prior to the date specified for the receipt of proposals,” (ii) the proposal was “received at the Government installation” and was “under the Government’s control” before the solicitation deadline, or (iii) it was the only proposal that the Government received. (FAR 15.208(b)(1)(i)-(iii))

This applies not only to Defense and IT contractors, but also to health care companies competing for government contracts. (See FAR 15.208(b)(1): “Any proposal, modification, or revision, that is received at the designated Government office after the exact time specified for receipt of proposals is ‘late” and will not be considered.”; see also FAR 52.212-1(f)(2): “offer, modification, revision, or withdrawal of an offer received at the Government’s office designated in the solicitation after the exact time specified for receipt of offers is ‘late’ and will not be considered.” )

Doing business with the United States federal government can be very lucrative, but it comes with a price.

That price arrives in the form of reporting obligations, recordkeeping, outreach, and much more.

Failure to comply with all applicable regulatory requirements can also have steep consequences, so it is very important for federal contractors to ensure they are doing all that is required.

Companies are sometimes unaware that they are a covered contractor or subcontractor and, thus, find themselves unprepared for an Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) compliance review. In an effort to better prepare for these types of situations, this article is intended to provide some practical information and resources about federal contractor thresholds and where to look for federal contracts.

The VA’s Verification Assistance Brief for SDVOSB and VOSB joint ventures flat-out misstates the law regarding the manner in which joint venture profits must be split.

SDVOSBs and VOSBs often rely on Verification Assistance Briefs to guide them through the CVE verification process, and CVE analysts sometimes use Verification Assistance Briefs, too. Which begs the question: how many CVE-verified joint ventures are legally invalid?

The VAAR provides that a joint venture can be eligible for a VA SDVOSB or VOSB set-aside contract so long as the joint venture (among other things) adopts a joint venture agreement meeting the requirements of the SBA’s SDVOSB regulations. So far, so good–joint ventures are complex enough; the last thing we need is a separate, VA-specific list of SDVOSB joint venture requirements.